I
work for a very well known academic publisher and when I first started wokring
there I dutifully signed up to all of their online community boards. I trawled
through pages and pages of sales and music and just general interest related
ones before finding one of the most popular ones was the *******
Zombie Response Team. I
immediately joined and discovered hundreds of similar minded people who
discussed the pros and cons of various methods of survival. We even had people
who were editors of Biology and Chemistry titles discussing the science behind
whether it was safe to eat fish or not!!
This
made me realise that a interest in Zombies wasn’t unusual amongst all circles of
people, but given that the Zombie is such a horrible thing, why was there not a
similar interest in Vampires.?
The
idea of the vampire has been with us for a very long time, but since Polidori
wrote his infamous “Vampyre” short story in 1819 they have been embedded within
our popular culture. Since then, the Vampire has become firmly established as
the rock star of the monster world., Attracting huge fan bases of people
idolising them, Vampires have become one of the staples of modern fiction. It’s
impossible to list the modern fiction and films that recount tales of these
monsters, but the most prolific at the moment is the ‘Twilight’
series.
I will admit, I love these books, they fulfill a basic need and desire within
myself to believe that this kind of relationship can exist. The vampire part is
entirely secondary. I realise however that as an intelligent adult (I hope) this
is entirely irrational. The novels are written from a very conservative
approach; Bella’s virginity and the integrity of her soul is paramount to
Edward, and these values strongly reflect the author’s beliefs. The main
character stalks and mentally abuses his love interest and in any other scenario
this would be entirely unacceptable, but even I find myself buying in to the
‘romance’ of it all.
Since these books were published the vampire genre exploded again and the
plethora of very similar fiction chokes the market. Most of these continue to
idolise the monster and nullify our horror at their behaviour. As I will explain
below this is incredibly dangerous and actually more influential to behaviour
than any violent video game.
Like the Vampire, the concept of a Zombie has been around for a very long time,
but it wasn’t until 1968 and “Night of the Living Dead” that the Zombie hit
popular culture and fundamentally changed the face of horror.
I have been fascinated by Zombie fiction and films since I was a child and I
have watched and read countless books and films. Even though I’m not the best at
computer games, I’ve sat their and played zombie games with a friend (to do the
difficult bits) for years, relishing in the terror I feel as I’m chased and then
eventually surrounded.
For me, the Zombie connects in a completely different way than the Vampire.
Zombie fiction has nothing to do with love, or hero worship or the desire to be
beautiful forever. It reaches in to the very pit of your stomach and rips
whatever trepidation you had out of you. You can’t run forever and in the end
it’s about survival (and blood and getting to carry really cool
guns).
The traditional Zombie story is about the inexplicable rise of the dead, they
are everywhere and they are unstoppable. There is always a woman, some cannon
fodder and the capable would be survivor.. and a house with too many windows and
a basement that you can’t escape from.
The modern world however has created some stories which are revolutionary in
their designs. “28 Days Later” introduced the idea that these monsters weren’t
dead, they were sick, and importantly for me looked at how this would affect the
UK. It fed my fears about our habit of wanting to ‘free’ things that are caged
and the lack of firearms available in our society. The concept that these people
weren’t actually dead also made the horror seem a little more real than having
to suspend the disbelief in magic.
The “Resident Evil” films and games also looked at this idea of a virus although
their infected were very much dead. The genius part of this story was the dark
and technically rich power that still controlled the world even after the
Apocalypse and the idea of the troubled superhero to fight them.
Since then there have been a multitude of books and films, some of the best from
my perspective include films like “Colin”, a low budget British film shot from
the perspective of the Zombie, and the series “The Walking Dead”. “The Walking
Dead” in particular as not only does it have a very capable character who uses a
cross bow (which is legal in the UK - and my dad builds them!) but also
confronts the idea of morality and suicide. The gang members fighting to protect
the residents of a nursing home, the woman questioning the morality of having a
baby in the post apocalyptic world, the concept that the zombie’s are sick
people rather than monsters, and the horror of your own child becoming a zombie.
Then of course there is Max Brook’s “The Zombie Survival Guide” and the key
message here is that there
is no cure
and to survive training and using sheep to guard your compound is paramount...
As you can see there is a very common theme among all of these movies, games and
books. There is no hope, there is no cure, and in the end they will get you.
This leads me very nicely to Mark Tufo’s work, “Zombie Fallout”. This series has
been written by a true Zombie believer and survivalist. At this point I’m going
to show my true colour as a Zombie fan and say that we - the Zombie fans - all
know that if this happened in real life the only people equipped to survive are
ourselves. We know that news reports of widespread biting and violence all mean
one thing - if your American get your gun - if your British get your cross bow -
and if your Scottish like me, get the cross bow and hide out in your
conveniently located island castle that is just opposite your house.
Mark Tufo has injected a strange yet funny sense of humour to the genre but most
importantly introduced entirely new ideas.
If
Zombies - the living dead - can be real, why can’t other monsters be
real?
A
regular person would have at this point put a vampire in to the mix, Mark Tufo
put a Zombie
Vampire
- genius and his series has certainly hit all of the right notes in terms of
thrills and revelations. . By the way if you haven’t read these yet, go out and
get them from Amazon.
So where does this take us, we have tales of the living dead, people sick from a
disease that causes violence, governments overthrown, evil powers still in
place, survivalist and normal people trying to survive. What does this mean, and
what lessons can we take from this? Is our obsession with the Zombie a backlash
against the normalisation of subjugation and violence in our society? Are we
looking at the Zombie as the surefire consequence of genetic engineering and
pandemic disease?
Personally I see it as a backlash against the normalisation of monsters in our
society. We have vampires being seen as heroes, genocide in Rwanda and Darfur
and terrorists perpatrating horrible crimes upon the world. The bad guys are
hard to identify and there is a real fear of the perpetrators within our
midst.
So what does this mean?
Ahhh …..who the hell cares, all I knows is that Zombies fans kick vampire fans
butt every time, and that I’ve got my plans in place for when it all goes down.
Do
you?
